This fairly representative account of the travels of an Anglo-Norman king in his dominions during the course of one year is testimony to the peripatetic character of royal and ducal administrations in the eleventh- and twelfth-centuries. But, like other sources used in isolation, it barely indicates the intensity of itinerating government reached during the long reign of Henry I (1100–1135), and which was maintained at a heightened pitch in the chaotic decades to come.

Modern historians have recognized that itineration was fundamental to medieval kingship and that it was crucial to the governance of a geographically disparate realm, as kings divided their time between historically separate regions. Itineration was a practical device in the absence of fully-developed governmental institutions as well as an economic necessity, for in partially monetarized economies, it was not always possible to move goods easily from county districts to main centers of power.

Only a handful of recent, comprehensive studies of government in Norman and Angevin England have touched on the subject of itineration. David C. Douglas concentrated on the men who comprised the royal household and who attended meetings of the royal curia in his analyses of William the Conqueror's (1066–1087) personal kingship.

Aphra Behn (1640–89) stands simultaneously at the center and on the edge of Restoration literature. As one of its most prolific writers, her success as a playwright was rivaled only by Dryden; however, as a woman, she defied and challenged contemporary ideas about sex, gender, and authorship. Behn was remarkably aware of the ambiguity of her position; a widow, a writer, and a professional, she inhabited and personified the grey areas of seventeenth-century gender roles. For these reasons, her work provides an interesting window through which to view the relationship between gender and literature in the late seventeenth century.

The subject of several book-length studies and many more articles, Behn has experienced a renaissance in the academic community during the last ten to fifteen years and has been installed in the seventeenth-century literary canon. Two related aspects of her career however have been overlooked. The first is her interest in natural philosophy, including her criticism of philosophers for not sharing their knowledge. The second aspect is her work as a translator, especially as a translator of scientific texts. Perhaps the enduring perception of translation as an essentially derivative activity has led scholars to dismiss Behn's translations as uninteresting or unoriginal. In so far as natural philosophy was a “masculine” discipline, however, Behn's translations demonstrated her ability to participate in and translate between elite natural philosophy, often written in Latin (the most “masculine” language), and a general or female audience.

In the spring of 1912, the British syndicalist leader Tom Mann was prosecuted under the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797 for his opposition to the use of troops during the great coal strike. He was convicted and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, but an outcry from socialists, trade unionists, and progressives forced the Liberal government to reduce his sentence and release him early from prison. This much is familiar to historians of early twentieth-century Britain and Ireland. It is often forgotten, however, that Mann was only one of eight syndicalists and socialists who were prosecuted for their involvement in the “don't shoot” agitation. It is likewise forgotten that Mann went on trial just days before the suffragette leaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Frederick and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence shared a similar fate, amid demands that Sir Edward Carson, the leading opponent of Irish home rule, join them in the dock. Indeed, the Nation, a progressive Liberal weekly, complained that “the country is…getting somewhat tired of political trials.” Perhaps because we assume the relative transparency of the law, historians have failed to scrutinize in detail the origins and outcome of the “don't shoot” prosecutions. George Dangerfield devoted one sentence to them, Elie Halévy a few more; although the “don't shoot” episode has been invoked to symbolize the increasingly fragile relations between Liberalism and the working classes, it continues to receive only brief mention in accounts of Edwardian labor and politics. Even Tom Mann's biographers have shed little new light on his case.